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Special focus: Youth and Global Population Largest Generation of Youth in History

The momentum of global population growth is indeed slowing. Thanks
to the efforts of the past 30 years, growth rates have fallen and will fall
further in the coming decades. But because of high fertility in the past, world
population is still growing by over 80 million people a year. It will continue
to grow at or near these levels for the next decade. What happens after that
depends on action in the coming years.

Ninety-seven per cent of the world population increase takes place
in the less developed regions. Every year the population of Asia is increasing
by 50 million, the population of Africa by 17 million and that of Latin America
and the Caribbean by nearly 8 million. Africa has the highest growth rate among
all major areas. Sixty per cent of the world population increase is contributed
by only 10 countries, with 21 per cent contributed by India and 15 per cent by
China.

Past high fertility means that more young people than ever -over 1
billion between ages 15 and 24 - are entering their childbearing years. At the
same time the number and proportions of people over 65 are increasing at an
unprecedented rate. The rapid growth of young and old "-new generations" is
challenging societies' ability to provide education and health care for the
young, and social medical and financial support for the elderly. This is the
news according to the United Nations Population Fund's, The State of the
World Population 1998.

Over the next two decades some less developed regions will see a
temporary "bulge" in the working-age population relative to older and younger
dependents. This "demographic bonus" offers countries an opportunity to build
human capital and spur long-term development - if they invest in education, jobs
and health services, including reproductive health care.

East Asia was the first developing region to experience the
demographic bonus, and it helped to build the region's prosperity into the
mid-1990s. Asian countries invested their demographic bonus in health care and
education. The Republic of Korea, for example, increased net secondary school
enrollment from 39 to 84 per cent between 1970 and 1990 while more than tripling
expenditure per secondary pupil. South America had a similar opportunity but
missed it because countries failed to make similar investments. A similar window
of opportunity is opening in Southeast Asia and South Asia.

6 BILLION AND GROWING

World population, 3 billion in I960 and 5 billion in 1987, will
pass 6 billion in 1999. Whether it ultimately grows to 8, 10 or 12 billion will
depend on policy decisions in the next decade. Over 90 per cent of the growth
will take place in today's developing countries. As the largest-ever young
generation comes of age, society's obligation to address their educational and
health needs, and to promote their human rights is both a moral and practical
imperative.

European countries went through a gradual transition from high to
low fertility and mortality over the past 150 years. The transition is very much
faster in today's developing countries, where improvements in preventive health
and medical care in recent decades have dramatically reduced mortality,
especially infant mortality, and increased life expectancy.

Fertility has also declined, but much more slowly, resulting in
unprecedented population growth and young populations. Since 1960 Gross Domestic
Product per capita has tripled and contraceptive use has grown fivefold, from
10-12 per cent of married couples to 60 per cent in 1995.

In some developing countries, mostly in Africa, fertility and
mortality are still high, though declining. There, a woman's chances of dying as
a result of pregnancy are more than 1 in 20, life expectancy is below 60 years
and 10 per cent of newborns do not survive their first year.

In the least developed countries, 43 per cent of the people are
under age 15. In 71 high-fertility countries, more than 40 per cent are under
15. Since 1980 over half of the global increase in adolescents has been in
sub-Saharan Africa.

In all developing countries, the proportion of the population aged
15-24 peaked around 1985 at 21 per cent. Between 1995 and 2050, it will decline
from 19 to 14 per cent, but actual numbers will grow from 863 million to 1.16
billion.

Children under 15 in developing countries outnumbered people over
65 by nearly 10 to 1 in 1950 -more than double the ratio in the developed
countries - and by over 11 to 1 in 1975, the ratio in 1995, though falling,
still exceeded 7 to 1.

As a result of reduced fertility and mortality, there will be a
gradual demographic shift in all countries over the next few decades towards an
older population. The number of people over 65 will grow by about 9 million this
year, 14.5 million in 2010 and 21 million in 2050. By 2050, 97 per cent of the
growth of older populations will be in today's developing regions (more than one
quarter will be in India), compared to 77 per cent now.

In a growing number of countries, couples are having fewer
children than the two they need to "replace" themselves in the population. But
even if "replacement fertility" were reached immediately, populations would
continue to grow for several decades because of the large numbers of people now
entering their reproductive years.

This momentum will account for up to two thirds of the projected
growth of world population, more in countries where fertility declines have been
fastest. Raising a mother's age at first birth from 18 to 23 would reduce
population momentum by over 40 per cent.

In countries that have already reached replacement fertility, an
influx of migrant workers could ease the labor force decline and alleviate
pressures on social security systems.

ADOLESCENT WOMEN HAVE THEIR OWN UNMET NEEDS

Today, there are more than one billion young men and women between
the ages of 10 and 19 around the world - the largest generation of youth in
history. The 260 million 15-to-19 year-old women throughout the world are the
next generation of mothers, workers and leaders. To fulfill these roles their
sexual experience must be acknowledged and their educational and reproductive
health needs must be met.

Parents, communities and governments must recognize how quickly
the world is changing, and how imperative it is to direct attention to improving
the situation of girls and young women. Indifference, wishful thinking and
denial will not prepare their children, particularly their girls, to take their
rightful place in a modernizing world.

This is the conclusion of an extensive report compiled by The Alan
Guttmacher Institute, a New York City basedNGO, on the basis of
research conducted in 53 developing and developed countries, covering five major
regions which represent about 75% of the world's total population.

The study found that up to 60% of adolescent births throughout the
world are unplanned, and about one in nine adolescents lack the contraceptive
protection they need to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. Furthermore, over 300
million cases of curable Sexually Transmitted Disease (STDs) occur worldwide
each year, with young women especially susceptible to these diseases.

Girls continue to be disproportionately disadvantaged in their
access to education. While more young women today get a basic education than did
their mothers, (seven or more years of schooling) girls in many developing
countries get less schooling than boys and those in rural areas get less than
girls in urban communities. Gender disparity is common throughout North Africa,
the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, where half of the countries studied
showed six or fewer young women attend secondary school for every 10 young men
enrolled.

SHARE OF WOMEN EDUCATED IN DIFFERENT GENERATIONS, SELECTED
COUNTRIES, EARLY 1990s

COUNTRY

EDUCATED WOMEN AGED 45-491

EDUCATED WOMEN AGED 20-241

DIFFERENCE

(percent)

(percent)

(percentage points)

Tanzania

26

84

58

Jordan

37

94

57

Kenya

43

94

51

Viet Nam

40

86

46

Nigeria

15

58

43

Morocco

11

45

34

Indonesia

59

92

33

Senegal

6

33

27

Guinea

5

30

25

Mexico

70

94

24

Bangladesh

25

47

22

Yemen

1

23

22

Nepal

3

22

19

Burkina Faso

5

22

17

Mali

2

18

16

Pakistan

11

25

14

Niger

1

15

14

Brazil

84

96

12

Egypt

40

52

12

Burundi

13

21

8

1 Having at least a primary school
education.

SOURCE:

UNICEF, The Progress of Nations
1995 (New York, 1995)

Distribution of population in the less
developed regions by access to health services, 1985-1995.

SOURCE:

Charting the Progress of
Populations, December 1998

On the basis of the study of sexual activity and marriage, the
majority of women have their first sexual experience as adolescents. Although
levels of early union and marriage have typically declined, adolescent marriage
remains common among women in some regions. In many countries of Sub-Saharan
Africa, 40-60% of adolescent women marry by age 18, and in others, such as in
Mali and Niger, more than three-quarters do so. In India and Bangladesh, 50-70%
marry by age 18 and in Latin America and the Caribbean 25-40% do.

The study found that worldwide, 11% of adolescent women - or 29
million, both married and unmarried are sexually active and do not want to have
a child soon, but lack the necessary protection to prevent an unwanted
pregnancy, either because they are not using a contraceptive method or because
they are using less effective methods. Alarmingly, in Asia, contraceptive use
among married adolescents is very low in India and Pakistan (less than 5%) but
more common in Indonesia and Thailand (36% and 43%, respectively), where it has
increased strikingly since the 1970s. In Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and
the Middle East, rates of contraceptive use are low among married young
women-20-30% in Morocco, Namibia and Zimbabwe, and under 10% in many others.

The study still shows that each year, adolescents have more than
14 million births worldwide. In the United States, seven in 10 births to
adolescents are unplanned. One-fourth to one-half of all adolescent births in
Latin America and the Caribbean are unplanned, as are 15-30% of those in North
Africa and the Middle East and 40-60% in such Asian and Sub-Saharan countries as
the Philippines, Ghana, Kenya, and Zimbabwe.

Across Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean,
a woman who has her first child before age 15 will have an average of seven
children by the time she has completed her family; That means that if today's
young women were to have their first child two-and-one-half years later than is
currently the average age at first birth, population growth by the year 2 100
will be 10% lower than if no change occurs; if they postpone that first birth by
five years, it will be 20% lower-a decrease of 1.2 billion people.

Faced with an unwanted pregnancy, some young women seek
clandestine abortions, which endangers their health-or their very life. The rate
of adolescent abortion varies from country to country, ranging from very low
levels in Germany (3 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-19) and Japan (6 per
1,000), to moderately high levels in Brazil (32 per 1,000) and the United States
(36 per 1,000).

In Malawi, Uganda and Zambia, adolescent women represent
one-fourth to one-third of patients suffering from complications of unsafe
abortions, that number is more than half in Kenya and Nigeria. In Latin America
and the Caribbean, about one-tenth of all women hospitalized after an abortion
are younger than 20, and adolescents comprise one-third of the women with the
most serious infections.

Furthermore, sexual relationships that result from force, coercion
and abuse, and some cultural practices such as female genital mutilation,
endanger the reproductive health of young people. Young women who are sexually
abused are at risk of infection and unwanted pregnancy, and they may also suffer
other trauma and psychological distress. In the United States, four in 10 women
who have sex before age 15, report their first sexual experience as involuntary.
In Santiago, Chile, nearly 3% of young women who have sex before age 18 say that
rape is their first experience of sexual intercourse.

In some regions of the world, the AIDS epidemic has reached
shockingly high proportions among adolescents; nearly 13% of all urban youth
aged 14-20 in Rwanda are infected with HIV. Half of HIV infections occur among
people younger than 25, and recent estimates show that some 7,000
15-24-year-olds are infected with HIV each day. In Botswana, Nigeria and Rwanda,
20% or more of pregnant adolescent women test positive for HIV.

CONCLUSION

As we approach the world of 6 billion in less than six months
time, growth will not stop. Human numbers will certainly continue to expand to
reach 7 billion, but whether our population then goes on to 8, 10 or 12 billion
depends on individual actions made in the next decade.

Those decisions will be determined by the one billion young men
and women-the largest generation of youth in history - now entering their
child-bearing years. A truly formidable demographic force and their pattern of
childbearing will have major implications for the future size of the world's
population.

SOURCES:

UNFPA at www.unfpa.org The State of
World Population 1998 UN at www.un.org Ecosoc/Dept. of Economic and Social
Affairs /Population Division; UN at www.un.org Ecosoc/Division of Social
Development/Youth; Allan Guttmacher Institute, "Adolescent Women Have Their Own
Unmet
Needs."